This invention relates to the location of patient care instruments with respect to a patient's bed.
A modern critical-care room has a computer terminal and display. The nurse or other person attending the patient uses the computer terminal to bring up the person's chart electronically, to determine what procedures have been prescribed for the care of the patient, can administer those procedures to the patient, can take vital signs and can make appropriate entries in the computer of the patient's condition and the care that has been given the patient, thereby bringing the patient's chart up-to-date.
The computer terminal is usually on a stand in the patient's room, the terminal being accessible but nevertheless out of the way of the attendant's movements as the attendant administers to the patient. The attendant may make two, three or four trips to the terminal in a brief (up to ten minutes) visit to the patient's room.
Similarly, the patient's room has been provided with a headwall or power column. The headwall or power column presents electrical outlets for patient care equipment, gas and vacuum outlets and many accessories for the care of the patient, including an infusion pump, a sphygmomanometer and cuff for taking blood pressure, drainage equipment and a monitor for the display of regular or continuously-monitored patient data, including EKG data, blood pressure data and the like. The headwall and power column have been fixed, usually at or close to the wall of the patient's room adjacent the head end of the patient's bed. In some instances, in the case of a headwall, some items of equipment are duplicated on each side of the patient's bed so as to be available to the patient on either side of the bed, depending upon the patient's condition. In instances where it is necessary to administer a code procedure to the patient having heart arrest, the bed itself must be moved away from the headwall or power column in order to make available the head end of the bed for access to the patient.